Bob,
I agree with what you say about the relative advantages of 'bump-ladders'
and 'point ladders'. There are situations where people prefer one over the
other, not always the latter over the former. I designed a computer program
for each of those two kinds of ladders.
I just wanted to make a point about placement of newcomers. When my
ACTIVE-LADDER program was new, I volunteered to run the men's singles ladder
at our club. We started with about 30 players in May, and ended up with 99
players at the end of the season in December.
We started by letting the head pro decide where newcomers should go into the
ladder. Since this ladder was growing fast, we started hearing complaints
from players, saying "I keep winning my matches, yet I am losing ground,
because you always put new people ahead of me".
This is a ladder where the system scheduled one match to be played by a
certain deadline date. In our case, we were running on two-week (almost)
cycles. The schedule was published every other Tuesday morning, and matches
had to be played by the second Sunday.
To solve the newcomer problem, we began to place all new players at the
bottom of the ladder, but we threw in rather frequent wild-card rounds,
where a 'ringer' could take gigantic steps. Another alternative had been to
arrange with off-line qualifying matches to determine where a newcomer
should come in.
There are many ways to skin that cat, obviously. One thing is certain; if
the administrator of the event really makes sure that the event is run in a
timely, well organized way, almost any system can be successful. On the
other hand, if the leader does a sloppy job, any system will fail!

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